


My Poetry to Protect Me

by cognomen



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-11-05
Updated: 2012-11-04
Packaged: 2017-11-18 00:46:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/555032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cognomen/pseuds/cognomen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carter just refused to notice him. He was not sure what she was looking at, but it always seemed to be somewhere in the distance, or possibly just contained in the recent messages on her cell phone - Bill occasionally saw her scrolling through, looking pensive. Her dark eyebrows would crease in together, and obviously something had tried her patience in the way he rarely saw police work get to her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Poetry to Protect Me

Carter just refused to notice him. He was not sure what she was looking at, but it always seemed to be somewhere in the distance, or possibly just contained in the recent messages on her cell phone - Bill occasionally saw her scrolling through, looking pensive. Her dark eyebrows would crease in together, and obviously something had tried her patience in the way he rarely saw police work get to her. 

She'd click it closed and put it away before he got up to her, however, and reassemble herself into a business like smile, pushing her hair behind her ear with one hand. He hasn't figured out a way to bring it up after that, he's not sure there ever really will be one. So maybe he interrupts her a little more than he usually would when she starts to look concerned, or disappears with her phone in her hand.

He wasn't an idiot. He remembered - half remembered, anyway - the conversation he'd heard on a safe-house floor, gutshot or no. She'd spoken civilly to the 'man in a suit' - the one she'd been looking for all that time. Pain couldn't make him forget that conversation, or looking up and seeing what he'd seen.

So he knew that this is connected to that, that even though she'd said in no uncertain terms that it was time for him to find someone else's life to interfere in - at least Bill is pretty sure that's where the conversation had come from and where it was going - it was still happening. So sometimes, when he put his hand down over the bandage covered raw flesh on his belly, he wonders when it's going to be okay to talk about that. If it ever will be. 

And then there's the nerves, too. Because he's not an idiot. He knows that the concern for her safety partially stems from a different kind of concern - maybe possibly the romantically interested kind. It's tough to get a read on Carter, mostly because her mind always seems to be going round and round on something or another. That distracted look, the reach for her pocket and then her need to be someplace private - he has to fight down the urge to assume that's one of two things, either one manipulative as all hell. 

He'd been back now for a week, stuck desk jockeying and filing paperwork until his head went around in circles just thinking about field reports and discharge reports and car sign-outs. They're necessary, but he's a detective and this isn't what he's cut out for. Maybe without having any occupation for his attention except something that felt like the only possible solution to which was procrastination until the inbox exploded he wouldn't have noticed just how often she disappeared from her desk. 

And Detective Fusco, too. He was, as Bill's dad would have said 'a rat-fink and a no-gooder', and that situation - that partnership made about as much sense as a slide whistle on a pipe organ. But they both got up and moved around each other in secretive circles that they were careful not to remark on to each other and Szymanski finally starts to get that maybe Fusco isn't stuck with Carter - or the other way around because one of them pissed somebody else off, but because something is going on, and it all strings backwards to the man in the suit.

(The man who'd held his head up off the floor while Carter pressed kitchen towels over the hole in his middle, so far as he remembered.)

He looked up from his desk more and more and found her looking more and more pensive, checking the phone again and again. About the third time that he found himself internally pep-talking himself to 'do something about it', he finally did.

He does it casual - casually as he can, since when he tries to sling his leg up over the corner of his desk and sit in a way that can't possibly be ignored, the stitches pull and turn the motion into something jerky and unnatural, and she tracks the progression of the motion rather than looking up at him as his leg slides right back off and the heel of his shoe clicks against the floor again. 

"Can we talk?" he asked her motherly-disapproving expression, trying his best to weather her creased eyebrows when she finally meets his eyes. "I mean for real? I have some questions of a semi-sensitive nature," he was rambling, he was being an idiot, so when her expression changed from pleasant and neutral to pointedly, blankly curious, he sighed. "You want to go get coffee? If I have to look at one more mis-spelled field report..."

He has no idea what he'd do, so he can't even make something witty up. Probably he'd just stamp it approved, and move onto the next one. 

Carter looked like she knew it, too. But she got up from her desk anyway, and nodded, pushing away her paperwork in a pointed fashion that said she understood how he was feeling. "You're buying," she said, but she smiled to show she wasn't annoyed.

The coffee place knew them by sight - as individuals anyway, the barrista makes some facial contortions at Szymanski as she hands over the coffee that he wasn't sure how to interpret, but he got to take the credit for getting her usual coffee right anyway, and he sat across the table from her and tried to figure out how exactly to bring up what he wanted to ask.

"Okay, Detective," she said, and grinned. She expected it.

He tripped up for a second and did his best to cover by pensively stirring his coffee. "So - the guy in the suit...?" 

That wasn't what she was expecting. 

"You are seriously not asking me that right now," Carter said.

"When am I supposed to ask it?" 

She looked at him sharply, angry for a moment, as if _she_ was the one being patient with _him_ , before she relented with a sigh. "You're right. I'm sorry it's just - not a good time."

"When is?" Bill asked, hands curled around his coffee cup.

"Probably never," she allowed, and her voice climbed to up to a more normal tone. 

"Well, listen," Szymanski tried, taking a deep breath that pulled his stitches and regretting it. "I trust you. I think if we know anything about each other..."

The phrase came out oddly, implying - he wasn't sure what.

"It's that we're both trying to get some good done around here."

Her expression softened a little. "Well, that makes one of us with a little blind faith." She didn't say it unkindly. "But it's better you don't know - that way, if it's a big mistake, and sometimes I really think it is - _somebody's_ still around with their head on straight.

Bill sighed - yeah, maybe he could accept that. Maybe he had to, if he trusted Carter - and he _did_ , because he knew how to look and still see the good in the world.   
-

She looked at him again after that and occasionally she smiled. Maybe he shouldn't have let it go as easily as that, but she'd smile at him when he looked up to see her sliding out of the room with her phone to her ear, as if maybe the unspoken conspiracy they shared actually _helped_ her.   
And he would smile back, felt it at the corners of his eyes and fluttering around behind his stitches. Because hey - what do you know. Maybe he had a chance.

So when she grabbed him for coffee and she looked like she'd won the entire war on crim and dishonesty singlehandedly, Bill was swept along in that tide. Maybe his own current was going along that same direction, who knows?

She grabbed his hands in the hall and said, "We got him!"

Carter's eyes were deep and sparkling and she was practically yup on her toes anyway. Szymanski kissed her - awkwardly, on impulse, and then immediately apologized.

She laughed and Bill felt less like an idiot. She didn't kiss back, but pulled his hands up closer, held them tight between her own and said, "Hey, that's okay." Like she could work with it. 

"Who, uh," Bill started, and she laughed _at_ him, then.

"Elias," she said warmly. "We caught Elias." 

So they celebrated - a lot of cops celebrated that night. Good and bad, it was a mutual victory, and for once Szymanski almost didn't mind having to rube elbows at the bar with H.R. He didn't drink too much, and she didn't either, so they leave in separate cars. He almost didn't find the paper in his sports coat as he shrugged it off, but he habitually checked the pockets of his things before he dropped them in the bag for the drycleaner's - and there it was. Seven digits and an assumed area code.

He called her right then, late as it was.

"You're taking too many lessons from your new friend," he said, running his thumb over the paper.

"I was wondering if you were giving me the cold shoulder, Bill," she answered, but she sounded like she was laughing.Then, directly, "Are you coming here or am I going there?"

"Just-" Szymanski said, as he looked around at his tiny, narrow New York apartment. It was pretty spartan, he had to admit. And still littered with the indicators of his recovery. "Like that?"

"Yeah," she said, coaxingly. "Just - like that. I'm afraid that's all either of us can afford right now."

Casuality. Bill's heart sank a little, but he - still wanted it. And he knew, he was an idiot for hoping, with a telephone to his ear and a paper in his palm, that it would evolve past that, but he hoped it anyway.

"I'll come to you," he said, and she gave him her address.

Just like that.

She met him at the door and didn't let him ask questions Maybe she knew he'd be awkward and backwards and too honest. She gave him permission not to be. He didn't see much of the living room - a backpack on a chair, a smattering of pictures. It was religiously tidy, but not unlived in. He doesn't miss the violin case on the breakfast bar as they pass it. She noticed the nervous glance he spared it, but kept going until they hit the back of the condo.

"Uh," he almost stuttered when he found himself in her room with his shoes and jacket on. It's not like he expected rose petals on the bed or dozens of lit candles but this seemed so practical and abrupt. 

"Taylor's with his grandmother for the evening," Joss reassured him, and it just suddenly felt - too planned, too scheduled and neat for something this casual, and Bill felt himself shying away from it.

"It's not-" he said, and then he stepped out of his shoes, like he had entered a shrine, and crossed the threshold into her room and stopped, and his hands stretched forward of their own accord. He hesitated and she took a step to help close the gap and convince him it was okay.

He put his arms around her instead of rushing, and she was tall and firm, and he realized _he_ was the one that was shaking after a couple of seconds and laughed around his breaths at himself. 

"I'm not too good at casual," Bill said.

"No, huh?" She said, and had the good grace to sound faintly surprised even though she had surely already guessed. She didn't make him feel like an idiot.

"We can't take it a little slow?"

"Sure," she said," But you have to take off your suit coat at least."

Bill figured he could manage that, and when she suggested it in a matter of fact way, he figured they could get into bed, too. They fit together on her big bed - it took up most of the room, but he liked it. Liked being able to stretch out if he wanted. Liked, especially, when she curled against his side and put her head down on his shoulder. Carter is the best feature of her bed, in a comfortable old t-shirt and leggings, unreserved in a way Bill didn't feel like he'd earned, but that he liked. It made him relax, and she kept her hands on his chest. 

"I pretty much ruined your evening, huh?" he asked, when they had settled.

"No," she said, and she meant it. "You still came."

He laughed, all nerves, but felt a little better afterwards. And they talked - about work, about nothing at all for a while. Then about themselves, and he liked that. Liked to hear her confident voice telling him about how bad a cook she was and how much take out she ate. 

In the end, they just sleep, curled together, and it was the best four hours of sleep Szymanski had ever had, still dressed and curled on a bed that was still made under them because they had no need of blankets when they were pressed together.

**Author's Note:**

> I was trying to transition into the second part more naturally for the longest time, but this is really just gonna have to be in two chunks separated by some time. Sorry. Title from Simon & Garfunkel’ s ‘I am a Rock’.


End file.
